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The Red Bird

Eudocrimus ruber. Adults measure 55 – 63 centimetres in
length with males slightly larger weighing about 1.4 kilograms. Wingspans are 54 centimetres and nests are
messy stick constructions built well above the waterline. Flight is nimble and the curved bills of the
males are 22% longer. Let’s talk of
waders. Let’s remember Caroni.

And there was Eid on its way. And there was Diwali on its way.

‘Take my number,’ she said, ‘and if you’re not busy for Eid, call me and you can celebrate with us.’
Just as once there had been a coincidental meeting with a Dhakaiya
businessman aboard a Bangaon train, there was that young woman in the Miami terminal, waiting as we were for the flight to Port of Spain. We’d asked her of her country and she’d said
a few things. You know a country has to
be good when the first invitation is granted before arrival.

She had no way to know there’d be knobble-kneed Shazam in Bermuda
shorts and t-shirt to look after us.
Neither did we. It was our very first
trip to Trinidad.

Shazam was used to tourists because he was the driver at the
guest house in Diego Martin. He’d spent
the week before us with a wealthy American woman who’d had shopping to do and
he’d enjoyed that. He knew the tourist
routines of the north of the island and he’d heard all the tourist
complaints. He was used to the sometimes
fussiness of foreigners.

Shazam was expert enough indeed to dutifully ignore the
instructions of the guest house manager regarding the ordering of the sites. The main trouble seemed to be with Maracas Bay,
a postcard beach on Trinidad’s northern shore
where the manager may have thought about the tourist-friendly sunset, telling
Shazam to go there last. Shazam thought
about the traffic and the narrow winding road.
Despite working as a driver, he was nervous in traffic and on narrow
winding roads. You could tell this by
the way he jerkily swung to the side on occasion as a speedier vehicle passed;
and because he said as much.

It was hot in the middle of the day at Maracas Bay,
perfect for a swim and a lunch of the battered shark in roti dish called
shark-n-bake. And it was just as well to
do things the Shazam way.

I’m not sure why Shazam thought we’d be delighted by the
modest modern shopping malls of Trinidad. Perhaps that’s where some of the other
tourists liked to go to feel at home; maybe he’d been there with the American
woman the week before; but it didn’t take much time and he was pleased to show
us, in between the British colonial blocks of the Trinidadian capital, so we
didn’t suggest anything different.

In the evening we toured the Hindu fair beyond the city, to
the south. Trinidad’s
population is split, about evenly, between Africans and Indians, the
descendants of slaves and of indentured labourers, and while the Africans are
Christians, the Indians are divided principally between the Hindu and Muslim
communities. It’s the strong Indian
influence that makes the island unique in the West Indies. There were flashing lights and tabla songs on
a stage at the fair, because Diwali was on its way.

Eudocrimus ruber. It was after that I suggested Caroni and Shazam was quite discouraging without exactly
explaining why. I pressed him for the
reason and in the end he said he’d taken tourists there before and they said
there was nothing to see. There were too
many mosquitoes and Caroni was just a swamp
and it was disappointing. We had to
convince him that we’d not be of such an opinion.

He was still in two minds at the dock where the small,
open-air tourist boat waited. He still
worried about mosquitoes as we put repellent on. Politely he made it clear that he’d not
recommended Caroni and so if we didn’t enjoy
it, it wasn’t his doing. And we waved as
the boat set off.

At first there were narrow channels with mangroves on either
side and the boat had to drive slowly to find passage between the submerged
sticks and the shallows. It was there we
saw the python, spiralled tightly in a mangrove branch. Indeed there were two. It was there the afternoon sun sprinkled gold
among the greenery and brought reflections enough on the water to make
tranquillity. There was a caiman too, a
smaller alligator relative, posing in wait amid twig and branch on the
channel-side mud.

Well, the channels became canals and lagoons as the sun
moved lower, as the sky was decorated with those Caribbean
pinks you don’t seem to get elsewhere.
And there were greys too, in the rain clouds that mostly moved around us
but occasionally delivered a little light water down upon the boat. To go further was to better appreciate the
size of the marshland: at five thousand hectares it’s not the Sundarbans but it
is large enough to feel lost in.

And perhaps there are no tigers in Trinidad
but there are the scarlet ibises. Eudocrimus ruber. The main attraction.

It’s a diet of red crustaceans that produces the brilliant
scarlet of their feathers. The colour
comes about at the time of the second moult, as the younger birds in grey,
brown and white learn to fly. The
scarlet ibis is the only shorebird in the world with red feathers.

As the boat once more returned to smaller channels the first
ibises found us. They were like shots of
fire beneath the mangrove canopy, light streaks flashing across the mangrove
green and black as they somehow negotiated the entanglement of branches in high
speed flight. What do the pythons and
caimans, and all the other animals that sought to blend in, sporting mangrove
tones, think of those flashy ibises?

But as soon as the flashes of red, three or four together,
were spotted shooting by, so they were gone and the terrain returned to its
usual shades. Was that all we’d see of
them?

And there was Eid on its way. And there was Diwali on its way. But it was
not these occasions, rather Christmas which was still some months away that
came to mind as the boat turned to enter a larger lagoon once more. There was a large tree at some distance, and
it seemed to be decorated with dozens of shining red lights. As the sun was negotiating its last with the Gulf of Paria
in the direction of Venezuela,
the ibises came in to roost by the dozens, choosing that singular tree, and as
each weary air circle was completed and a pair of wings finally folded, one
more light was added to the unlikely, everyday, mangrove, marshland Caroni
Christmas tree.

Eudocrimus ruber. The wader.
The eater of red crustaceans. The
tree decorator.

It was dark as the boat returned to the dock. Shazam cautiously asked how it was and he was
rather pleased with the answer. He was
relieved because we said nothing of mosquitoes, mostly as there weren’t any
about. Caroni
was not ‘just a swamp’ and we had no complaints. Who indeed could be disappointed with the red
bird?

On the drive back to the guest house we passed a Christmas
tree sculpture of small white lights, and on one side was the outline of a
Diwali lamp and on the other a crescent moon.

On the drive back Shazam said to me excitedly, ‘I have met
many tourists, but if I ever get the chance to travel I want to travel like you
do. You take things easily, as they
come.’ In the car, full voiced, he sang
his national anthem, and we sang ours.
And we had no complaints.

Shazam took us to a park on Diwali evening where we lit
candles along with local families. And
for Eid he took us to his home, to feast and to celebrate.